Southeast Asia: 3 fintech trends in 2019

The financial world has constantly evolved, but nothing can compare to the rate of change over the past five years. Technology has forged a new path for both tech giants and startups who are competing for opportunities in this realm. This competition is also forcing banks to change.

In Southeast Asia, countless new players which would have remained unknown a decade ago are emerging. Let’s take a closer look at the rapidly changing landscape in 2019 and how it will affect consumers.

The future of AI in Southeast Asia’s financial industry

He was reminding us how every business was transformed by the use of electricity in the previous century. Today, AI is transforming industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, automobiles, the media, and financial sector in a similar way. This is happening all over the world including Southeast Asia.

At its simplest level AI is changing the way businesses interact with customers using chatbots. But chatbots can be used for much more than just communication. For example, they can analyze spending habits and provide tips on how to save money or suggest how to successfully invest and gain the best returns. AI can also provide financial institutions with enough computing power to swiftly detect and resolve issues such as fraud or money laundering.

Process automation is another noteworthy example of AI. Banks have to store and manage information about customers, including documents and employees often manually fill out forms such as loan applications for customers, which wastes a lot of time. However, Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) helps systems recognize, extract, store and analyze information.

Since AI is so essential to banking of the future, Bangkok Bank has recruited several startups that are applying AI in innovative ways for Bangkok Bank InnoHub Season 2.

AntWorks offers corporates an AI-based solution to convert data from diverse formats into a digital format. It uses an AI-based data analysis system to create statistical reports or obtain new information about client behavior and significant events.

Pand.ai is the developer of a chatbot system which uses an AI engine and Natural Language Processing (Deep NLP) to gain a more efficient understanding of human conversation and provide more natural responses.

You can find out more about these and other startups participating in Bangkok Bank InnoHub Season 2 in the upcoming in-depth interviews.

Non-Financial tech expansion throughout Southeast Asia

The tech giants that are expanding throughout Southeast Asia usually start from one business such as an e-commerce, ride-hailing, or chat applications. Once they have gained a large user base, they enter the financial sphere, where, for example, they can provide services such as payments, loans and insurance. These kinds of business models have been adopted in China for some time and they are now spreading to Southeast Asia due to the large number of internet and smartphone users. To expand in these markets, the giants may acquire or invest in local companies and become their strategic partners.

The dramatic rise of digital lending in Southeast Asia

Most countries in Southeast Asia have developing economies where people have limited access to sources of funds. One reason for this is that it is difficult to track a person’s credit history. However this will change with today’s technologies, as once a system has acquired enough data it can assess the creditworthiness of the person applying for loans.

Banks can collaborate with tech companies that have consumer data and analytics to build Digital Lending Platforms. For example, some tech companies might possess data about farmers, taxi drivers or messengers/couriers and banks can gain access to this data by partnering with them. This enables efficient loan analysis, giving people with low incomes a better chance to access funds.

These are three key fintech trends we will see across the region this year. During this era of rapid and intense change, businesses must keep learning and be ready to adapt at all times. Those who refuse to change, believing that they will remain safe from digital disruption, place their companies at risk, especially in the world of fintech, where new players are coming from all directions to grab market share. Meanwhile tech experts can creatively apply their skills and technology to offer efficient business solutions and grow their own business at the same time.

Our Partnership

Invoice-trading marketplace for businesses to raise fast working capital.

Headquarter: ThailandAbout the company: SMEs who trade with large organisations often suffer from long payment terms and late payment. InvoiceInterchange is a P2P invoice-trading marketplace that allows SMEs to raise immediate funds against outstanding invoices by selling them to investors. This unique approach gives businesses control and flexibility to manage their cash flows on their own terms. At the same time, accredited investors (high net worth individuals, asset managers, family offices) have the opportunity to invest in a new asset class i.e. trade receivables that are secured, liquid and with high risk-adjusted returns.

First Circle is the first digital SME lender in SE Asia serving underbanked SMEs with the finance they need to grow.

Headquarter: PhilippinesAbout the company: With a team led by former associates of Morgan Stanley, McKinsey, Ci Labs, and the team who led the EM roll-out of the CompareAsiaGroup, First Circle provides productive credit to SMEs in developing markets. It partners with eCommerce platforms, payment service providers, trade bodies, and online originators to reach and serve business owners at scale. The process takes 1-3 days to complete with SME’s submitting traditional and alternative data in support of their application. In addition, First Circle uses technology to drive process automation including KYC and underwriting.

Everex is the first microfinance platform on the Ethereum blockchain that is based on stable-coin (fiat pegged and backed).

Headquarter: ThailandAbout the company: Everex is a financial inclusion blockchain remittance company using the Ethereum blockchain to create “cryptocash” assets, which are pegged to units of fiat currency and tethered to the P2P network. With a vast number of underbanked global citizens, Everex performs cross-border transactions by collecting and analyzing a user’s financial and personal data as a basis for blockchain-based credit scoring and lending offerings. By implementing this solution, Everex furthers financial inclusion and access to capital in developing markets.

Bento powers banks and wealth managers with institutional portfolio construction tools, including strategic and tactical asset
allocation which benefits their end clients by utilizing technology at a low price point.

Headquarter: SingaporeAbout the company: Bento is a human-led robo-advisor (Bionic) that brings a fundamentally-led institutional asset allocation model for individual investors at a very low price point using technology. It aids human advisors to impart unconflicted and customizable investment advice.

Covr Security has developed a mobile security platform that combines user-centric management of both mobile security and digital personal data with advanced authentication and end-to-end encrypted communication security protocols.

Headquarter: SwedenAbout the company: Covr Security provides a unique app-based mobile security and management solution – it is a platform that offers user-centric management of personal data and mobile security. Covr’s solution addresses the security threats hindering trust in mobile environments as well as the issues affecting mobile end-user engagement. Through a secure connection between the end-user’s device and any digital solution, Covr ensures the correct individual gains access to data, funds, or a physical space. As a result, this creates a password-free environment for all users.

FundRadars is helping everyone to invest with an all-in-one simple mutual fund analytics and e-investing platform.

Headquarter: ThailandAbout the company: SiamSquared Technologies (Thailand) Co., Ltd. is a Bangkok based investment technology firm. It launched StockRadars, an application principally designed to simplify investment for everyone which has now surpassed 500,000 users to-date. It extended its range of service to the mutual fund market which eases the decision-making of fund investment for all.

Canopy is a “make sense of your data” company – It is a powerful aggregation, visualization, analytics, and reporting tool to help wealth management professionals and high net worth individuals make superior decisions.

Headquarter: SingaporeAbout the company: Canopy is a powerful account aggregation, visualization, analytics, and reporting platform to help financial institutions, wealth management professionals, and high net worth individuals make superior decisions. By aggregating all the data from different sources in one place, the visualization and analytics are available on a web-based interface for desktop and mobile and available in Email, Excel or PDF reports. With to-the-cent accuracy, Canopy provides wealth management experts with a professional tool for client servicing and enables individuals to make accurate and reliable decisions.

Bambu is an Asia-wide B2B Robo-Advisory firm offering financial and non-financial firms the ability to integrate and benefit
from the shift in digital wealth.

Headquarter: SingaporeAbout the company: Bambu is a B2B Robo-Advisory software firm offering financial institutions and consumer brands the ability to integrate and benefit from the ongoing digital transformation in wealth management. It is looking to market its services Asia-wide, capitalizing on its traction to tap the growing robo-advisory market.

Headquarter: USAAbout the company: CryptoMove Tholos is the world’s first and only key and secrets management product that protects API keys, tokens, certificates, and other application secrets with decentralized moving target defense. Moving target defense technology is a security paradigm shift and identified as a priority by global banks, MIT, NIST. CryptoMove launched after years of stealth R&D and is globally patented.

Headquarter: SingaporeAbout the company: EYWAMEDIA is a multi-award winning futuristic cross screen customer engagement and experience venture that enables brands to engage their most potential-loyal customers based on offline-online data across screens (TV, Radio, Cinema, App, Web, Social, Print, Billboards, Stores) to make the best match between products and preferences of customers!

Headquarter: SingaporeAbout the company: Jumper.ai is an AI powered platform enabling brands to capitalize on social media posts to create engaging customer experiences and also turn it into a point of sale, in an instant. No websites to build, no apps to download. Jumper.ai auto responds to buying signals and trigger events on social media to create immediate rapport, context, engagement and sales pipeline with more prospects.

Pand.ai is the leading conversational AI specialist for financial institutions in Asia.

Headquarter: SingaporeAbout the company: Pand.ai is an artificial intelligence startup that specialises in deep natural language processing. We develop the underlying algorithm that powers “smart chatbot”​, i.e. the ones that understand the semantics of an entire sentence and retains contextual memory, thus making conversations more “human-like”​. We are currently serving Global Fortune 500 companies across Asia.

Headquarter: ThailandAbout the company: Pymlo develops a simple back-end accounting platform for SMEs and startups to manage business operations and accounting for a fraction of the time and price. We seek to bring Asian SME’s accounting to the modern world, showing them the ease of digitizing accounting and the benefit to connecting to the wide financial world.

Headquarter: India
About the company: Vymo improves productivity metrics such as conversion percentage, turnaround time, and sales activities per opportunity and has a revenue impact of 3-10%. With Vymo, salespeople can focus on high-ROI activities so that their time is not spent reporting data.